For Amanda Saab, the flavors of Ramadan are baked into sweet, tender bites of namoura. Her Lebanese grandmother used to make the cake, folding together frothy, aerated yogurt and semolina flour. Now Ms. Saab makes it the same way, soaking the cake in a floral-scented sugar syrup while it’s still warm from the oven, and cutting it into diamond-shaped pieces.

“While I’m not consuming food all day, I’m thinking about food,” said Ms. Saab, a social worker who lives near Detroit. “Not about how I’m missing out, but about how to make the best thing to fulfill everyone’s cravings after a long day of fasting.”

Ramadan began Friday evening in the United States, and on Saturday in other parts of the world. For 30 consecutive days, many of the 1.8 billion Muslims around the world will fast, eating each evening after the sun goes down and squeezing in a predawn meal before it rises again.

Fasting may sound strenuous, and it is, but it’s also an act of devotion during a month filled with immense joy, culminating in the feasts of Eid al-Fitr. There’s an emphasis on community and charity, self-reflection and kindness. The absence of food can deepen its meaning: After pushing through long stretches of hunger and thirst, there is a heightened sense of gratitude and delight that comes with breaking the fast while surrounded by family and friends.

“When everyone’s standing around, picking from the same platter, suddenly you get a surge of energy,” said Malika Ameen, 42, a cookbook author and pastry chef. “Everyone is chatty and smiling with the anticipation of dinner.”

Ms. Ameen’s father immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in the 1960s. She grew up in Chicago, where her family hosts vibrant iftars, one of the names for the evening meal that breaks the day’s fast.

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Malika Ameen at home in Chicago.CreditNathan Weber for The New York Times

An iftar may be as elaborate as the truffle-laden platters on display in the dining room at the Four Seasons Resort in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, or as simple as chicken and rice, passed out free on paper plates at a mosque.

For home cooks, who often take turns hosting an iftar or carrying their homemade food to share at community centers and mosques, it’s time to shine.

Many will strategize for the days ahead, planning menus and cooking in bulk. Keeping a few labor-intensive dishes ready to warm through can minimize the time spent hungry, in an unreasonably fragrant kitchen, when there are hours to go before the day’s first bite.

“By about 3, you start to hit a wall and you wish you didn’t have to be around food all day,” Ms. Ameen said. “Everything starts to smell so strong.”

She stocks her freezer with homemade samosas to last the month, ready to crisp in hot oil or to pop into the oven in small batches. Ms. Saab fills hers with kibbeh, the bulgur wheat and beef shaped by hand into tiny, plump footballs, and makes big pots of lentil soup.

Of course, not everything can be done in advance. Ms. Ameen will also put together light foods she finds ideal for a fasting stomach, like fruit chaat, a tangy, savory fruit salad made from what’s ripe that day and in season, all marinated with cumin, dried mango and chiles.

“We eat a lot of watermelon,” Ms. Ameen said of one of the fruits she uses to make the chaat. “You’re so dehydrated, it’s a quick way to get liquid into your body.”

Dahi vada also makes appearances throughout the month, the lentil fritters soaked in a cool sauce of yogurt and a second of sweet-sour tamarind. It’s a dish that her family serves this time of year and no other, and as it’s garnished, the perfume of toasted, crushed cumin rises.

“That smell, to me, is the smell of Ramadan,” Ms. Ameen said.

The diversity of Muslims in the United States is reflected in a wide range of foods that will break fasts all month long, from casseroles of macaroni and cheese to es campur, the Indonesian dessert of fruit and jellies, from the Nigerian bean fritters known as akara to asheh, an herb-packed Persian soup.

“But the fast is a reminder that food is a means, not an end goal,” said Faiyaz Jaffer, a research scholar and chaplain at New York University’s Islamic Center. The center will serve iftar to nearly 300 people each evening, with catering from restaurants such as Soul Spot in Brooklyn and Fatima’s Halal Kitchen in Queens.

“It’s hard to put into practice, of course,” Mr. Jaffer said. “We save up to eat at expensive restaurants, we think about food and what meal is next, but the idea is that there’s a time for that, but it’s not the end goal of life.”

Though not all Muslims choose to fast, fasting is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and many are connected by it each year.

“It’s a test of our willpower, a way to emphasize our spiritual dimension,” Mr. Jaffer said.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, and this year it falls at the tail end of spring and the beginning of summer in the United States. The days stretch out, long and hot.

“I will make a big salad every day, and that is not negotiable,” said Ms. Saab, who likes to pace herself with light foods that will hydrate and nourish.

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An elaborate iftar laid out at the Four Seasons Resort in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.CreditDuncan Chard for The New York Times

For her Lebanese-American family, she prepares juicy variations on fattoush: a range of crunchy vegetables, herbs and leafy greens tossed in a simple lemon-sumac dressing with pieces of warm fried flatbread.

Ms. Saab also serves fattoush at “Dinner With Your Muslim Neighbor,” the meals she hosts twice a month for friends of friends, colleagues and locals she has met via Facebook. She started the dinners with the idea that she could complicate and add nuance to the national understanding of Muslim Americans, one person at a time, by inviting strangers into her home and offering them seats around her table.

It’s work, but Ms. Saab wants to continue these dinners during Ramadan. And she has been moved by people from outside of her faith, eager to fast by her side for a day. “I think it’s so generous that they want to fully embrace and engage,” she said.

Skipping food and drink for well over 12 hours can put stress on the body, which immediately struggles against dehydration and hunger.

Many people experience throbbing headaches and dizziness, caffeine withdrawal and waves of fatigue. (Ms. Saab, who is expecting a child over the summer, will not fast this year; young children, pregnant women and older adults or the unwell are not expected to do so.)

“It’s a big change to go from three meals a day and snacks to fasting, and all of a sudden that energy isn’t coming in,” said Mark Mattson, chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, who studies the effects of fasting.

“Just like it takes a while for your cardiovascular and muscular systems to adjust to the stress of exercise, the bioenergetic challenge of intermittent fasting is the same,” he said. It can take weeks, or in some cases up to a month, for the body to adapt to more restricted time windows for food.

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Bim Adewunmi in her apartment in Brooklyn.CreditSasha Maslov for The New York Times

“The first week is always rough,” said Bim Adewunmi, a journalist for BuzzFeed News, who began fasting for Ramadan at boarding school in Nigeria. “But it’s very rewarding, and I always feel like a champ when I’m done.”

Ms. Adewunmi, 34, cooks for ease when fasting, focusing on carbohydrates and protein, often preparing a single, simple recipe on a loop all month.

“One year, I was obsessed with courgette fritters,” she said, using the British term for zucchini. “Another crazy Ramadan, it was spinach balls.”

She found the spinach recipe on a halal food blog, an adaptation of the Italian chef Antonio Carluccio’s green dumplings. It was ideal for breaking the fast at home the way she liked, with comforting food she could warm up and eat in small doses throughout the evening.

“You’re so worried about how hungry you’re going to get, you end up eating way too much and it’s uncomfortable,” she said. “You learn it every Ramadan.”

Last year was Ms. Adewunmi’s first living in New York. Far away from her family and friends during Ramadan, she found herself alone between work and home at sundown. She stopped in a Punjabi-owned bodega in Manhattan and asked the shopkeeper if he had anything with which she could break her fast.

Ms. Adewunmi doesn’t like dates, truth be told. But in the moment, and in the spirit of the month, she found that it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the generosity of a stranger, the small and beautiful kindness. She ate four.